Count Dooku Fleet - The Enemy's Gate is Down

 Count Dooku Fleet - The Enemy's Gate is Down

Let's start with the list itself, shall we? Quick note: If you're familiar with the most excellent Armada Fleets Designer app, then you'll be familiar with the format of the fleet list. If not, then you should know that the numbers in the parentheses next to the fleet name are as follows - number of points invested in squadrons/total number of fleet points/maximum number of fleet points.

The Enemy's Gate is Down (105/399/400)

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Comms Frigate (70 + 57: 127)

· Count Dooku (30)

· Rune Haako (4)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Engine Techs (8)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

· Sa Nalaor (5)

Recusant-class Support Destroyer (90 + 17: 107)

· TI-99 (4)

· Hyperwave Signal Boost (3)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Transport (47 + 13: 60)

· Bomber Command Center (8)

· Foreman's Labor (5)

DFS-311 (18)

5 x Hyena-class Droid Bomber Squadron (5 x 11)

4 x Vulture-class Droid Fighter Squadron (4 x 8)

Surprise Attack

Fleet in Being

Infested Fields

I haven't gotten to play Armada in a quick minute (or really much else outside of my solo experiment against The Tsardom of Russia in Spirit Island), so my mind has been wandering a bit. I plan on attending Adepticon and I already know what fleet I'm flying. So any fleet building I'm doing is something in which I'm really only half-invested. But since I'm not getting in as much practice as I'd like, I might as well mess around with some ideas. Hence this list!

I started with this Squadron Bunker Recusant build I stole from CGYSO (thanks, Eric!) knowing that I planned on throwing squadrons. The one upgrade I leave off of here is Ruthless Strategists. I had it here at first! But I just needed space and it didn't quite make the cut. I'm not sure that was the right cut to make, but I was loathe to get rid of Reserve Hangar Deck or the Foreman's Labor title on the Hardcell. I really enjoy the hell out of the Separatist squadrons, but I've seen and built so many squadronless Seppie fleets that I was pretty fixated on using said squadrons. So I've got my Recusant built out and decide to move onto squadron selection next. I love the General Grievous squadron. I think he's a ridiculously cool and effective ace. But I've already built a couple of fleets around him. I decide to go with a bunch of generics and see if I can keep them under cover of the Squadron Bunker Recusant. I go with 3 Vultures, 4 Hyenas, and DFS-311. I figure that DFS-311 can hopefully provide a little bit of cover for my squadrons with Intel. It was only after I put together the rest of my fleet that I decided to add the extra Hyena and extra Vulture, bringing my total squadron count up to 10.

All those scavengers circling...just waiting for their opportunity...

I'm obviously relying on my Hyenas to do some work against enemy ships, which means I need their red bomber dice to behave. So I obviously have to include a Hardcell Transport equipped with Bomber Command Center. I have to think it will be a priority target for my opponents, so I also put Foreman's Labor on there for a little bit of planned damage mitigation. I'll be pushing squadrons out there, so I decide to take a Comms Munificent. Another ship I really enjoy and that can do a lot of lifting. I know this is going to be my flagship, so it's only now that I start looking at the various Separatist commanders. I feel comfortable skipping TF, Kraken, and Mar Tuuk since I've only got three ships and I'm leaning heavily on my squadrons. I love Grievous, but since I almost always build Separatist fleets around him as a commander, I intentionally leave him on the bench. That leaves me with Trench or Dooku. I like Trench and think he can do a ton of good work. But this gets a little too deep into token distribution and maintenance for me and that's just not a machine I really feel like running right now. So I settle on Dooku. I think he can do decent work in disrupting enemy fleets regardless of what they're running. Even setting him against commanders that can counter Raid tokens *relatively easily* such as Tarkin (either variant), Thrawn, Bail or Trench may mean I don't get a lot of gain, but it also mitigates the gain that my opponent gets from their commander. Which brings us back to whose fleet can stand on its own.

So I equip Dooku to the Munificent. I have every intention of having my ships circle until I see a window. At that point, I turn everybody hard into the battle and they dive. They'll load up on as much damage as they can as they fly on by. This means I need to ensure nobody gets left behind. So I put Engine Techs on the Munificent. But the thing is the Muny really wants to push squadrons and I'm waiting for my window to turn into the battle and turn on the jets. If I'm waiting, even with a 2 command ship, I can't react immediately, which might be costly. Especially if I've got an 8 point upgrade in Engine Techs that I don't get to use. So I look at Skilled First Officer, but end up coming back to Rune Haako. I really like SFO, but I don't necessary want to change my dial. Especially because the nav chart on the Munificent is generally okay! Sure, I might want an extra click of yaw here and there, but I have at least one at every joint, and at speed two, I've got one yaw at the first joint and two yaw at the second. So even just a nav token should generally be sufficient if I'm flying well. Rune Haako it is. I've got another ship with red flak, so I put Linked Turbolaser Towers on this ship as well, and two copies of RHD is better than one, so that goes onto the Munificent as well. Finally, I decide to try out the Sa Nalaor title. It's a small defensive buff, but it might make the difference while I'm trying to make my approach and pick my shot.

2 of my 3 Objective choices are easy choices: I roll with Surprise Attack because it's even more Raid tokens I can throw at my opponent and I pick Infested Fields because I've got the squadrons to pick up those tokens. It's the yellow Defense Objective I struggle with for awhile. But I settle on Fleet in Being. I don't think I'll stick with it because I want to be able to fly along the side of the board if I need to. But with Fleet in Being, that'll cost me tokens and might cost me points. However, I like the notion of being able to ready defense tokens for a turn or two to ensure that my ships can get to where they need to be. If I play with this fleet more than once, I'm confident I'll end up swapping out Fleet in Being for something else. But for now, it'll serve.